


And He Thinks...

by Toffle



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Prison AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-20 02:10:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7386547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toffle/pseuds/Toffle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year out of jail from two perspectives, Tooru and Hajime work towards new lives, new hopes, new futures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And He Thinks...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amalasdraws](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Amalasdraws).



> This is a birthday gift for the wonderful [Amalas](http://amalasdraws.tumblr.com/) ! Who I hope has the most fantastic birthday ever, and I hope you enjoy this :D <3
> 
> This not my usual writing style, so it was an interesting thing to write and fun.

  The apartment Tooru grew in stands thirteen stories tall, windows broken, balconies netted, barricaded safety against any one stupid enough to regret it. His mother’s home sits on the ground floor with flowers on her window sill. Gnarled and twisted and brown, grey, black, they’re frozen dead in the dry earth, swinging in autumn's chill. A glance up and Tooru finds the spider web of cracked glass reaching out across the kitchen window, still broken even now after all these years.

  He’s herded through the security door, his mother’s hand against his back. She wears a smile that leaves laughter lines around her face, deep set wrinkles a permanent testament to her joys and her stresses. Was there ever a time he’d known her without them? She fills the silence where his pauses turn awkward, and she sticks on the water boil as Tooru finds a place for himself in the home of his childhood.

  The sun long set, Tooru finds reprieve in the walls of his bedroom, still flecked neon pink, purple, and green; phosphorous on a dark blue canvas. The dreams of a ten year old glow bright in the darkness, and Tooru thinks. _It's good to be home._

  The bed's too small and the mattress is worn; there's springs in his back, torn through from years of wear. At twenty seven, his feet stick out over the edge, too tall for the bed of a child. He’s never known anything different. Four bare walls and a bolted door had given Tooru the first bed that had ever fit, it feels alien to miss it.

  Absent of brick and mortar and the sound of the guards, this place is home, but there's something dissonant, something telling him that he doesn't belong. He's outgrown this room like he's outgrown his bed, and Tooru thinks. _This has to end_.

  Three months pass and Tooru finds himself facing new walls, new doors, and a mattress set like brick. A one bedroom apartment in a backwater city with one way streets, it’s as cheap as the shot to his resilience when the ceiling starts to leak and seasonal ice forms on the inside of the window. Tooru told his mother that this choice had been right, that he couldn't live at home anymore and had to lead a new life.

  There’s a rising rumble that climbs up from the ground, through the walls, and through the floor. On the third, Tooru’s windows rattle and the storm sound of the local district line passes by, thunderous across the tracks. From the floor above, somebody’s baby starts to cry, and Tooru pulls the limp, flat pillow over his head.

  The bare wall stares back at him through the crack, stained and peeling, and Tooru thinks. _Was this the right choice?_

  Time sits still for no man. A year passes quick and every day has chipped an inch deeper into Tooru’s shoulders. He’s working full time hours at a little coffee shop down a dead end street, but it gives him a paycheck. He can count the customers they get in a day and the shifts drag by seconds, by minutes, by hours. Bills are scraped by, barely making payment, and the fridge sees less action than his blood pressure on a monthly basis.

  Hours are often but irregular. Tooru comes home tired and hungry, but he sometimes needs to ask himself, would i rather have a hot dinner or a notice of eviction? The toaster pops and Tooru eats half burnt bread; the heating mechanism hasn't worked since he moved in.

  Tooru looks to the calendar and he thinks. _Is this worth it?_

  Tooru aces interviews like he was born for the position, but one CRB check has him back on the hunt. He circles listings in papers, with five different versions of the same CV, and articles stowed away on his old Sony laptop. Four years of university education are drowned out in the shadow of four years prison rehabilitation.

  Rejection becomes the norm and frankly Tooru expects it. Straight out from jail, no smart man would take on a risk, a liability, a threat to their company. So Tooru works his day job and bides his time, determined and patient for the one interview that will matter when the moment arrives.

  The local library remains open until six each day, and Tooru thinks. _I’m not done yet._

  Months tick by and the dates roll over, and Tooru's in a taxi heading back to bars and concrete and clockwork order. He's picking up Iwaizumi in an hour and had to hire out a taxi because he can’t afford the insurance on a banged up old motor. Well, it's not like Iwaizumi will be expecting a limo.

  At the gates arrives a familiar face, escorted out by guards in day clothes Tooru's never seen before. The tattered hoodie looks small on Iwaizumi, but maybe it’s Iwaizumi that looks small instead. The police file the last of the paper work and Iwaizumi is now a free man, chains gone, bars gone, the security of a regular meal, a roof, a bed… gone.

  Seven years and thrown back into the world? The social workers try to prepare you for that, but Tooru thinks. _He'll need some help._

  An hours drive is spent in silence, save for the taxi radio that's singing loud in a language neither can understand. They don't speak beyond small talk; small words, clipped sentences, and the awkwardness stretches and stretches.

  Tooru feels self consciousness prickle up his spine, standing outside of his door. He assures Iwaizumi, as he turns the key, that the mould on the wall really adds to the decor. Iwaizumi throws the place a cursory glance over and nudges his side with the point of his elbow.

  "You got yourself a roof over your head, you can worry about the gold plate tiles later.'

  Tooru squawks, a loud undignified noise and he clutches his ribs. And then there's _that_ , the smile on Iwaizumi's face, a little shy, a little awkward, trying to break the ice to clear the atmosphere. Tooru feels his heart swell three sizes.

  Minutes smooth over into hours, eating ramen out of a cup curled up on the sofa together. Their knees knock and their elbows bump. There’s no TV and there’s no radio, just the silence filled out in the awe from their voices. This comes easier, catching up one breached subject at a time, pushing into this new chapter of their lives, and Tooru thinks. _There's time to adjust._

 

* * *

 

  The corridors of the prison ward seem to glisten, fresh polished tiles across the walkway– The runway. Hajime can see the doors and in one good year he’ll be out through them, back into the world, to what’s left, to what’s been lost, to those who forgot him, who forgot his cause.

  Hajime wonders. He thinks and he plans, leaning on a mop end one whole mile away, somewhere to the left of cloud seven. There’s water pooling at his feet and a guard claps his hands, and Hajime comes straight back down.  

  There’s something akin to a cell block tango when it drips through the filters: the great parole announcement. With hands grasped tight around a pole, around a bar, tight around a single offer that lies dependant on his good behaviour, Hajime thinks. _This is where I get out._

  Months halt to a crawl, dragging stiff, slow, unyielding as Hajime finds that he’s counting days in ways that he lost back at the start. Back at the beginning when the doors had slammed shut, one, two, three, four. What did it matter after one week, two months, three years? Yet here, right at the end, Hajime counts the hours, the minutes, the seconds. They move like tires through tar as the hands slow to milliseconds on the black skid line of the hour and finally, the doors are open.

  Hajime finds that in time the run up to the wide, wide, world speeds up like a motor from zero to eighty, and no matter how hard he hits the breaks there’s no swerving to avoid the oncoming hit. When everything he wanted arrives dead at his feet, Hajime learns terror where joy should have been.

  At the counter desk, papers signed and history filed, he’s stood with his worldly possessions tidied away in one single, square box, and Hajime thinks. _I can’t do this_.

  There’s forty five minutes on the clock and the taxi driver is singing songs that buzz past Hajime’s ears; foreign white noise tripped over clipped words and high beat sentences. They cut through the silence, lyrical sounds hitting time with the pounding of Hajime’s heart. And Oikawa is practically silent.

  The small talk stretches, words into sentences where Oikawa tells him only what’s necessary. Bless his ridiculous heart because he’s trying, and Hajime has nothing to offer because there’s stones his throat instead of his boxers. So he hums and he nods feeling like an idiot, but he’s scared and he’s even more afraid to admit it.

  So tick, tick, tick, and Oikawa’s keys clack against the door, one blunt jingle that clanks in the lock, and Oikawa stands frozen. Four years fluent, Hajime reads the tension across his back, the lilt in his voice just shy of a quiver, and Oikawa’s scared too. He eyes the cramped hallway over and Hajime thinks. _We’ll get through this._

  A week jumps by and Hajime’s made a home for himself on Oikawa’s sofa. There’s more lumps in the burnt fabric cushions than the custard from the prison cafeteria, but he’s found comfort wrapped up around Oikawa’s ugly ass sheets. Faded white stars, now all shades of grey, have him bundled up in a blue that had surely once been rich and deep, but Hajime loves it.

  Comfort is found in more than just the sheets, but the familiar smell of Oikawa that sticks to every borrowed item Hajime currently loans. He finds it in steaming cups on the table by his head, in the attempts at breakfast; burnt bread and eggs. And as the alarms shrill breaks the still morning, Hajime finds that preparing for work is a little less worse than anticipated.

  Suited up, work slacks and boots on, Hajime calls out a farewell to the half conscious man asleep against the kitchen counter. As Oikawa’s tired insult reaches down the hall at his chuckle, Hajime thinks. _This is worth waking for._

  Routine becomes the staple and Hajime grinds long, hard, heavy hours. There’s something to love in a job like this that makes you work, that makes you sweat; hands on, full on, something Hajime can lose himself him. There’s worth found in lunch time breaks, in banter, in laughter, in comical mistakes. Where he had a seen walls slam down before his face, Hajime now see’s an easy path in one man talking to another, and socialising with strangers seems less at his expense.

  He comes home dirty, cement dust and clay across his hands, his feet, his cheeks. Stood outside the door with half hearted threats to hose him off. He owns a key now but still rings at the door, and one look from Oikawa, well boy it says it all. Satisfaction aches in every bone and there’s the foreign sensation of returning home; a home, his home, temporary as it is, but Hajime feels respite from reality knowing there’s someone home to greet.

  One lukewarm shower, in cold-hot wet drips across his back, and Hajime’s allowed to sit down. And it’s nice, it is, the release and the relief, and Hajime thinks. _I could get used to this._

  Hajime contacts old friends in a local town, three stops away on the beaten down district line; the same line that wakes him every morning and wakes Oikawa every night. The journey across town is made as fast as a twenty minute delay on a ten minute journey will take, and there’s fifteen curses off his tongue at each platform, five each more colourful than the others.

  They welcome him with arms wide open, full in the breadth and the weight of their huddle. Hajime’s swept under their wings, back into the community, out free, out open, ready to make a change and make a difference, and right where it matters. At the start, back at The Beginning, and Hajime see’s it in the teenagers faces, in the eyes of former gang mates, through the posture of old inmates.

  There’s chances in these four walls, in this community hall. The job, it don’t pay shit, but Hajime can’t put a price on an achievement like this, and Hajime thinks. _Where was this place when I was a kid?_

  Half a year passes, days lost, flown by, pressed hard under hectic work and busy schedules. Hajime’s watched bills fly in and money fly out, and he wonders how Tooru coped before. He remembers the insistence, the plea that he was fine on his own, that Hajime should save his earnings for his goal of a home. Bad ideas tossed aside, they worked out a system that paid the necessities that they had to provide. 

  But then isn’t now. Now is unease, tight and tense down his spine in a darkened corridor, home early from work where the rains had shut them down. Through thin walls, thin doors, Hajime can hear the soft mumble, the soft sob, the soft hiccups; heavy breaths and hyperventilation. There’s glass across the kitchen counter. Red letters in shreds on the table.

  Tooru’s in the corner, curled up deep into the sofa, red eyes, chest heaving, crying hard and vehemently trying to deny it. Eyes hidden under a hood so far over his face, he’s one short trip into the print fabrics Milky Way. Hajime scoots him over and places rough palms against his cheeks. He finds Tooru’s lips, and Hajime thinks. _It can’t continue like this._

  The month picks back up and they’re back on their feet, Tooru’s coffee warming his fingers in the spring breeze. Hajime takes a sip, sweet and bitter with too much cream, more sugar than caffeine in a single gulp that threatens him toothache, but it’s just the way Tooru likes it and it brings a grin to his lips. The work whistle blows and the day begins, and Hajime’s got a feeling that this week will be his.

  He’s got a work ethic that pays off – earnest, dedicated, competent – and Hajime finds a few extra jobs thrown his way. Chuffed doesn’t begin to describe it at the solid possibility of being able to afford new things, new clothes, fresh food, money put away for a rainy day. And hell, maybe he’ll get Tooru that stupid new DVD.

  Good fortune in his pocket and the tilt of the week climbing up to its peak, Hajime’s gets the idea, the notion, that maybe he could work towards something tangible. A goal sitting solid, weighty, heavy in his hands, and Hajime thinks. _I can make something from this._

  Two days later has Tooru flying out the hall. Hajime hears the trip, the crash, the bang, and the scramble as Tooru skids into the small box of a living room with an incomprehensible shout. Hajime barks out pain when Tooru barrels into his back with little regard for the height of the sofa. Hajime hears a crack, the wooden beams splintering inside the framework under the force of Tooru's dive – all six feet of a child in an adult body – crashing into him.

  The next words out of Tooru's mouth have Hajime pulling forgiveness and pushing out anger. Out alongside elation, joy, and concern, Hajime can feel the tension in every muscle above him, lean but scrawny. Tooru didn't just ace the interview, he gets the job too. A next week start training him into a position, a role, and a rota.

  Between the thrill and the fact that Tooru will be juggling the responsibility of two jobs, several shifts, and the time between: dead asleep, Hajime thinks. _Let this all work out._

  A free weekend sounds off like a trumpet, a celebration of their freedom. Where were the odds at, allowing them the time to be young again. They run with it, an accessory to the week that they can both take joy in. Hajime’s got an arm around his shoulder, listening to jokes so terrible they could make a nun cry. The banter is steady and Hajime leaves Tooru with an elbow in the ribs and a crow’s call cackle.

  Only, moments like these? They ain’t meant to last and, like a bad movie, there’s a ghost from the past, wraith like, gaunt, and sicker than a dog without much life left to burn. Hajime’s churning sickness in the depths of his thoughts. But he’s got solutions, and he’s got answers, and each one falls to deaf ears. Sent leaving, Hajime thinks about what could have been; could have been him, could have been others.

  The shock sits, a lead weight in his stomach, poisoning the joy experienced by him that morning’s moment. The knowledge eats at him, chips away for several days and several weeks, until that ghost? He vanishes from the streets. And Hajime, coming out the other side, back on his own two feet with a future in his stride? Well, he stops to take a minute and stops to take another, and Hajime thinks. _I’m grateful to be here._

  Months pass, fly by, drag by, and over the seasons Hajime has watched the times that they have laughed and cried. Successes and failures arrive like busses, three things at once that you never wanted, waiting ten hours for the one thing you coveted. But Hajime holds appreciation in buckets, a spade, four aces; four years in kind that brought him this life, this future.

  Now the horizon is looking golden, an expansive ocean, molten, in which Hajime can forge the things that he had forgotten. Hope. They’re working towards new changes, new doors, new walls. The building blocks of their lives are spread out across floor, an open canvas, and there’s no doubt that it’s a struggle, but every step up is step towards tomorrow.

  Promises look good, and hard work looks better, but there’s respite from the battle under star shaped covers. With their knees knocking, elbows bumping, noses nudging, Hajime thinks. _This is what it means to be happy._  


End file.
